KDE has been my daily driver since 2008. The upgrade from KDE2 to KDE3 was a nightmare, but once the dust settled, KDE became quite good... One of my favorite things about KDE is how they have left the user a wide berth to customize their experience. After almost 20 years of tweaking, I find moving to other desktop GUIs to be very painful. And to this day Dolphin is the gold standard for file managers.
I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence.
What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.
It’s the default because it’s much easier to provide a consistent desktop with gnome compared to KDE. Let’s face it, most quality Linux desktop apps use GTK. Even Firefox uses gtk.
So you can make KDE the default but you’re going to be forced to ship a smattering of gnome/gtk apps anyway with different ui/ux and looks.
On the other hand, you can easily ship a GNOME desktop without even shipping qt libraries at all.
zfs on Linux has not been production ready for decades. People have lost data from it. There's no real reason to allow the default installer to do this.
If you understand the risks, you can do it yourself.
MATE was forked around the time GNOME 3 was released and is still going. https://mate-desktop.org
Some people consider Cinnamon to be a GNOME 2 spiritual successor while still using a lot of GNOME 3 stuff under the hood. https://projects.linuxmint.com/cinnamon/
As a long-time GNOME user, I support this sentiment entirely. What a disaster. It keeps getting worse too. Now you can barely even tell foreground from background windows thanks to this Adwaita bullshit. First they removed all the features, now they're removing all of the visual information.
Same, I've using GNOME for a long time and haven't switched yet out of laziness and being busy with other things, but the next time I have to upgrade my laptop I'm giving KDE a spin, I'm tired of GNOME replacing useful features with... nothing.
They deprecate something and replace it with an app that looks sleek because it has no buttons, and it has no buttons because it has none of the features that I use. And this has happened with the file browser, the image browser, the pdf browser, the text editor... I've lost count. GNOME is seriously worse to use now than it was 15 years ago. At this point I'm not sure what they have left to butcher, but every new version they seem to surprise me with something new they found to mess with.
It's not just worse. It's MUCH worse. I'm in the same boat. I want to change but I don't know what to and haven't had the energy to put into that yet. This desktop is dead though and they're just beating it's dead corpse at this point. I've tried KDE a few times and it was just too disorganized for me, so I might just do something simpler like awesome or one of those tiling things and add in what I want. I used to just use openbox. There must be something equally simple for Wayland.
It’s far from dead. Take a look at the gnome circle apps as a demonstration of how many good applications are being written for gnome these days.
I believe a large part of this is due to the fact that to use QT you are still stuck with either C++ or Python, whereas there are a ton of gnome apps being written in JS and Rust now.
Gnome isn't dead - it looks more consistent, and in my experience, is running smoothet and cleaner than it ever has (including gnome2 days). It's fine that it's not for you, but comments like this are insane, and not healthy. It's 2025, we don't need to I sult software we don't want to use - just don't use it.
(And, threatening to move back to something like openbox, because gnome is too simple and degraded, is extra hilarious)
What GNOME was is completely dead. All of that flexibility and all of those features are gone. This thing here is something else wearing it's dead corpse.
> consistent
Ah yes, very consistent with two entirely different sets of window borders (GTK3 and Adwaita).
> And GNOME lives on as a sorry excuse for a bad copy of MacOS desktop looks without the feel.
This is an inaccurate description. GNOME is a copy of (the worst parts of) Windows 8 and Mac OS, not just Mac OS.
But seriously, GNOME isn't that bad, and there are people who genuinely enjoy it over KDE. Choice is what makes the Linux ecosystem great.
However, I do agree that KDE is probably a saner default than GNOME, if the goal is to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier. GNOME is (probably) less buggy than KDE, simply due to having less features overall, but the UX is going to be completely alien and off-putting to most casual users.
If I look back at it, GNOME is likely responsible for me abandoning all of my attempts to transition to linux when I was younger. I had no idea KDE or alt desktop environments even existed back then and even now distros don't make it easy to discover/experiment with them. It's to the point I have some internal bias against trusting any distro that uses GNOME as the default.
I hope in the future KDE overtakes GNOME to become the "standard linux" experience.
Personally I really like GNOME, and don't in any way consider it a "sorry excuse".
It's not perfect, of course, and it may not be to your liking, but that's just personal preference. I don't particularly care for KDE, but I don't go around spouting vitriol about it for no good reason.
1. Like yours, KDE is similar to Windows so it's less scary for new users.
2. KDE is similar to Windows so will confuse users when it doesn't run Windows software or doesn't quite behave in the same way. Macs don't look the same and people don't get scared or expect their Windows software to run on it.
I can see both arguments, and I've definitely seen internet complaints about both KDE and Gnome being either too similar or not similar enough and they are confused.
KDE looks different enough to windows in its default install though. And you can make it look like whatever you want, that's the best thing about it. Mine is heavily customised.
I like KDE a lot, and yes you can configure it to look and act just abut any way you like, but it's default definitely has a lot in common with Windows.
I migrated my non-technical mom from windows to Ubuntu in 2005 and my daily support questions on how to do this and that went to once a few weeks. Gnome 2 and Firefox was very simple. The OpenOffice stability was also great when Microsoft switched to ribbon.
Eventually I got her on a Mac and she hasn’t asked a question since. She keeps buying new ones ever since.
Many people (myself included) seem to get the impression that software that used to run on MS Windows before version 11 doesn’t enjoy the same level if backwards compatibility and forwards compatibility like it used to. People were half-joking that Linux/WINE now runs some older games better than Windows 11.
Maybe I need to lower my expectations a bit but I feel like someone who is explicitly leaving windows for Linux by that point would understand it can’t run everything windows does right? In the same way basically everyone gets that a lot of software doesn’t operate on Mac and Windows.
> I feel like someone who is explicitly leaving windows for Linux by that point would understand it can’t run everything windows does right?
I get it, but it's unfortunately not true.
The amount of folks I've seen complain about their Windows pirate copy of Photoshop CS6 not working on Linux so they will go to Mac over the years has been quite silly.
They’re complaining but I think they at least knew that it wasn’t going to work out the box if at all, they just tried anyway. I work in film production so I’ve seen this exact scenario multiple times and you’re absolutely right, but they weren’t surprised IME. They just thought they could figure it out.
I usually tell them “if you have to use Adobe, then move on. If you don’t care that much, there are plenty of free/affordable programs with feature parity (or better) for Linux against CS6.” I mean it’s pretty old!
I can easily see a novice user coming from Windows accidentally getting into the edit mode of Plasma and being completely confused. I like KDE as an advanced user but I wouldn't install it on my grandma's laptop.
I agree that it would be great to have it as a first-class citizen in more distros, but I guess the maintenance burden is not negligible. I'm glad Fedora promoted it though.
The average Linux user is not your grandma and lets not overstate how easy it is to mess up your KDE config. Most of the config ui in KDE is delightful compared to other desktop environments, and most non-technical users would shy away from even trying to fiddle with technical stuff. And those that do fiddle and mess up are likely to have a technical person at hand to help them, because someone had to install Linux for them in the first place.
KDE is a much more sensible default for the highly technical person who is likely to install Linux themselves. There are other great options if you want something more locked down and noob proof. KDE really is the most relevant choice for default for most distros atm.
Playing devil's advocate, KDE settings are clear but there might be a possibility for a "Advanced Mode" button (with a first-time click warning) on the top-right of the "Quick Settings" screen that opens up when we launch the Settings. That can hide the "risky" stuff (e.g. "Window Management" etc). There might be value in adding a "Lock Panels" options to handle accidental modifications/removal etc.
I agree with the “Advanced Mode” button. That’d solve a great deal of the issues that KDE Settings suffers.
On the other hand I think it could use a fair deal of work on the clarity front. There are a number of settings that are confusing or ambiguous even for some technical users.
I've had the opposite experience. I installed KDE on a new desktop I built for my mom, and outside of a handful of growing pains (mainly things Windoze had vendor locked), she's been happy as a lark with it. She hasn't gone very far off the beaten path and really doesn't have too much of a need to.
What’s up with this constant insistence that the Linux desktop should be familiar to windows users? I feel like people are just as likely to be familiar with OSX at this point.
Also I’m not sure why sticking with a 30 year old mouse driven desktop metaphor is a hard requirement.
I’ve been trying it out coming from the Mac recently, mostly because I had to do stuff that didn’t play well with an arm processor.
It is surprisingly elegant and polished now. There’s a couple rough edges - the settings menu needing the apply button on every change like a form is weirdly ancient, and notifications are a bit noisy, but overall I could see myself ditching macOS for it.
I loved the KDE 3.x series, it felt like the future to me. It was _way_ ahead of both Windows and Mac at the time in terms of features and power.
KDE 4 was a dud. Too much of a radical make-over instead of iterating on what worked. Ugly. Very crashy. I'm not sure how close KDE 4 came to killing KDE altogether, but it must have been pretty close.
KDE 5 was a vast improvement over 4, going back to what made 3 so good. Earlier releases left a bit to be desired and still had a few stability issues. Later releases were pretty well refined. I switched (back) to KDE at this point, when I switched to Debian 12 (bookworm) at the same time.
KDE 6 is just a continuation of KDE 5, but using Qt 6 under the hood and defaulting to Wayland. It's very solid, fast, and just gets out of your way so you can do real work with it.
The 4.x series was the one where the ideas still making Plasma so powerful were seeded. While I loved KDE 3 the design for 4 seemed revolutionary. Too bad it was alpha/beta quality up until the 4.6 release years later. I fared through all the bugs, crashes and performance issues with a young student's determination (while running Fluxbox on the side) but I can very well understand people doing serious work had limited patience for the issues.
Anyhow, happy anniversary from a long-time KDE user!
I don't daily drive KDE, but when I set up our home media PC in the living room over the weekend, KDE was a no-brainier to pick for the DE.
Everything immediately just worked, it's familiar enough that someone not used to Linux can click around and get to things, and as a bonus, controlling it from the couch with our phones is trivial with KDE Connect.
It feels good to donate to a high quality sane default that has been serving my needs as a daily driver. The more I see the mistreatment of Windows users by Microsoft, the more I am grateful for Linux and KDE.
I use KDE on my home PC since about a 15 years, exclusively. I like it a lot but it still has some rough edges here and there. For example, the network config interface is a bit messy. Sure you can configure many things with it, but it's hard to understand). Dolphin is the best file manager I have ever used, nothing come close nowadays (I have tested windows and macs). The desktop configuration is quite nice and the look and feel is really good too.
Unfortunately, it still crashes sometimes (about 2 or 3 times over 500 hours of usage, but my PC is 15 years old, so this may explain that).
And as many here, I sure don't think about changing.
Dolphin is a real gem. Split windows, tabs, open terminal in current location, etc. Going back to Windows Explorer is painful once you've gotten used to Dolphin.
I've been running KDE plasma with wayland in arch for over a year now, it's been an absolute dream come true. Everything just works. Gaming with Proton, dual monitors with different resolutions, Japanese input, I only need to hop onto windows when my son wants to play Minecraft.
I maintain the AUR package for this. `mcpelauncher-linux` and `mcpelauncher-ui`. If you just do a simple `paru -S mcpelauncher-ui`, it should build just fine.
Since MS bought it, aren't there two versions, a legacy one called "Java" and the newer one from MS, probably not in Java and with all the cool kids (multiplayer mode) on it?
Thanks KDE - I always liked the Windows-like design (that's what I would call it coming from Windows like many people).
Instead of hiding "power-user" features so well you have to google them to find them, I can interact with the OS on gui or command-line level - really depending mostly on my mood.
Although KDEConnect to easily connect a Windows PC, a Linux laptop and an android phone to share files and control my pc while watching a movie was the "step-up". When they are in the same network and approved, they simply connect.
My first introduction to Linux was through Knoppix, the first “live CD” if I recall correctly. Maybe there was something before it, but I remember it as something new and magical at the time: being able to test a full Linux desktop directly from a CD.
From there, as I was learning Linux (I was 16 years old), I used KDE a lot. It was such a cool experience. I especially loved how easy it was to create custom themes, the desktop widgets, and Amarok! the big “killer app” back then. A music player that could show you song lyrics, album art, and even the band’s history by pulling data from Wikipedia and other APIs. It felt futuristic.
Later on, I switched to GNOME as it became more popular in the mid 2000s, but I’ve always had a soft spot for KDE. It’s been part of my Linux journey for nearly three decades.
With this hitting multiple communications media for me independently over the last few hours, it has me considering whether I can switch from Windows to Linux for my gaming PC again.
Last time I tried, I used Ubuntu, and I experienced problems with several games via Proton (e.g., The Finals, Fields of Mistria, and Civilization VII, among others). I checked ProtonDB, and it looks like those issues may be resolved.
However, I also wonder what people are using to replace iCloud/OneDrive/Dropbox/whatever on Linux. Or, if they don't use such a thing in the first place, how they handle off-site backups of files and images.
Thanks for all the work done over the years! I've donated to the project many times and it always feels good to support something I enjoy using every day.
Glad they keep using the mascots to help brand and punch up their images.
Both artist links are either private or show closed commissions, so the artists aren't fishing for exposure to do lead gen, they have a passion to help make KDE be a better marketable product.
I daily drive KDE, but I'm glad that in part thanks go the KDE projects approach to accessibility to newcomers and these artists' desires to help out, we get visual aids for the masses, which are pleasant for those of us who live in walls of text and can help humanize an otherwise dry technical subject, aiding newcomers considering joining the project to have an easier time understanding what they are looking at.
I've installed two KDE+Tumbleweed machines in the past two days. One for a friend into retro gaming and the other time for older family into solitaire/youtube. KDE is an easy drop-in for Windows. If you have a better recommendation than Tumbleweed for new people, I'm open to looking into it, but so far it's been easy and I'll probably be the one to support it.
I'm still surprised at how smooth KDE Plasma + Wayland + Input actions on Arch feels on a fresh install on my new HP AMD laptop.
The Only slightly wonky thing has been the fingerprint reader. Other than that my Linux set up now feels smoother than my office Mac. AND I get way better battery life compared to Windows on the same machine.
Special call outs to: kwin, dolphin, yakuake, kde-connect
I was pleasantly surprised, that a recent update for plasma fixed the fingerprint reader for my thinkpad t15.
It previously had an issue, where it didn't work after waking from suspend.
I am used to having "Emacs key-bindings" on both gnome and Mac (so that for example ctrl-a will always go to the beginning of a textbox no matter the application, such as chrome).
For some strange reason this seems to be very hard thing to set up on KDE or am I missing something?
> so that for example ctrl-a will always go to the beginning of a textbox no matter the application
And Control-W will always erase word no matter the application?
This is actually a major reason I use KDE: I can, with some effort, change keyboard shortcuts to avoid conflicting with terminal Control keys. It doesn't solve the textbox problem, though.
(I don't use Emacs bindings, but Control-W erase word came in the ‘new’ TTY driver in BSD2 in 1983 — predating Windows 1.0, incidentally — likely copying TOPS-20.)
On paper KDE's system is more elegant and practical than GNOME's. In practice the keyboard shortcut management via exporting and importing is rather unwieldy. Then again, if you want to go deep into setting up your shortcuts to something properly usable, it's a fair bit more convenient with KDE, where all your shortcuts are in a single place, than with GNOME, where you have to look in all the gconf categories and it's a right pain to find conflicts.
There are projects like kinto that achieve very good results at making Linux behave like macOS on shortcuts (cmd instead of ctrl only when it makes sense, etc).
I’m not sure how they do it, i suspect it’s mostly a manual grind for configuring the most common shortcuts and apps, but there might be some idea there that can be reused for the eMacs setup.
As I thought: you can set a different shortcut for "Beginning of line" and it will work in Qt input fields but, sadly, not others. I don't know if this is the step you're on.
I'm not sure this is the reason or a big reason, but I think this is very difficult to do in Linux, sadly.
What makes Linux great is also its biggest handicap, in my opinion, when it comes to User Experience: the fragmentation of UI frameworks and libraries.
I imagine having this control between Qt, GTK and other UI libraries and electron-type-apps os difficult if not impossible.
It works perfectly on Gnome (ubuntu) though. There is simple toggle you have to do in one of the standard control panels as well.
I am surprised this issue is not gaining traction with the KDE crowd, as I imagine a substantial part of the userbase are emacs users and used to emacs keybindings.
omg I found my people. Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E are so engraved into my muscle memory that it always takes a moment to readjust when using non Mac OSes. I didn't know Gnome also uses those as a KDE fan
This seemed like something relatively easy for chatgpt to handle. The response is a bit complicated compared to what it sounds like you are looking for (it's not from the kde settings gui), but still a two minute "fix".
Happy birthday KDE, outside XFCE, KDE is the desktop I would go back to if I ever reconsider building a Linux desktop again.
Has all the developer goodies with KDevelop, written with tooling that empowers UI/UX development workflows, has a proper component system with much better tooling than COM, quite configurable without extensions all over the place.
Signed, a disillusioned former Gtkmm user, with how GNOME turned out.
It's been well over a decade (maybe closer to 2 in fact) since I have used KDE, and I'm happy with my more minimalist setup based on Arch+AwesomeWM, but I think KDE is a great project and like to follow its progress. It seems to have a great suite of software - the KDE versions of common applications often seem to be among the best FOSS options out there.
My first experience with KDE was the beta release that came with SuSE 5.2 in the late 90s. I still daily drive KDE, though very much has changed since then, it still is familiar.
I've installed KDE on my Ubuntu system instead of Gnome and it is pretty nice. It feels slightly more integrated, so lots of regular UI actions feel slicker and simpler.
I'm increasingly pessimistic about everyday reach of Linux.
Around me, all I see are Windows users, volunteers teaching old people how to use several tools... on Windows. Public institutions relying on Windows, upgrading to Windows 11, doing everything despite Trump, despite Microsoft, despite all of the negatives associated with it.
When primary school students are given Windows laptops instead of Linux ones, there's not much hope in changing. But how can you amass enough momentum and volunteers to get enough manpower to at least try to move in the other direction?
KDE surely helps, but it's like, nowadays simply trying to explain what a non-mobile OS is useful for, seems like yet another uphill battle, and I cannot fix even my small town by myself.
First and biggest challenge is that there's no single default desktop Linux, and even one distro could have different DEs, window servers, etc. Imagine asking for tech support, and giving your laptop model and OS is still not enough info.
I used Linux for a long time (since ~2002), but for the past years I've been daily-driving a MacBook.
I'm now switching back, and will likely go with either Gnome or KDE. I've used XFCE, i3wm, etc. for years before – and briefly tried Sway too before I switched to Mac – but from what I've read it sounds like the "big" DEs make life easier post-Wayland.
Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
Gnome UI sucks. It is ugly and non-customizable without plugins, or whatever you call that addon that enables you to put your clock on the right... I'm sure the UI makes more sense on a tablet or a phone with touch controls, but I just want to use it on my laptop with a regular monitor and with a mouse (or touchpad).
KDE has sane defaults and looks and feels like Windows UI from the best era. It just works.
"It just works" is the important part. The style doesn't matter a whole lot if things aren't working right. Is this other guy's comment about GTK not a real problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45581866
> Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
Just to give you an opposite perspective...I was a long time Kubuntu / KDE Neon user (almost 10 years) and shifted to Gnome couple of years back (Ubuntu 22.04), now running 24.04. It's been very stable and out of the way. I am not sure why people are complaining about UI, for me it's barely visible on my two screens. All open-source and proprietary apps I use run well and without glitch. It took me an hour to get used to the "Gnome" way when I shifted.
I guess because the defaults suits me better, and the configurability is exposed well and I don't have to load special tools or commands to change stuff.
I used to run complicated setups back in the days, with black/flux/openbox or even enlightenment (16), but now I don't really have the interest or time for tweaking DEs.
>Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
GNOME is like a tool that was designed to fit the average user so if you are not the average user (like you know the joke where the average person has 1 testicle) then you have to mold yourself to fit into GNOME (or try to hack it with unsuported extensions that might make it more tolerable) in KDE you have nobs to tweak it to fit you smoothly (like for example with one checkbox I can make the Left Alt to be a Ctrl button so i do not bend my hand and fingers to use my many Ctrl+keys shortcuts).
IMO use GNOME only if you are the typical GNOME user, that prefer to bend themselves over and not to adapt the tool to fit . Avoid KDE if too many options cause you some anxiety or buffer overflow.
I switched from Gnome to KDE Plasma because I find it more stable and more integrated since many of the features I otherwise miss are out of the box in KDE Plasma, and you do not need third party extensions which are quite unstable. Also later found out Plasma is much more configurable and personalizable so I xan really fit it best to my orefered workflow. I also find KDE developers listen to their users much more.
Amazing project my only gripes about KDE is that while the customization is great it can feel overwhelming and opaque. For example multiple different ways to get transparency (Kvantum & qt6ct) but nothing built in or large amount of different but seemingly connected config files with confusing syntax in .config
I hope the work on union will help fix some of that
Yes, if you choose to go off the happy path into the weeds, then you will be off the happy path in the weeds. The only desktop environments where that isn't true are the ones that forbid customization.
KDE user since version 2. Fell in love with KMail. Even upgraded my RAM from 16 to 48MB to run it smoothly lol.
Stopped used it at version 4, the new kdepim was atrocious. But now it's usable again. Probably my largest peeve is how there's advanced desktop search/semantic engine but it has no own interface as if the devs were ashamed of it, search results only appear when you type something in menu. And if you google nepomuk/baloo most ppl just ask how to turn it off.
Started regularly donating last year and it is well worth it. KDE Plasma is the best desktop in existance and they also make one of the best FOSS applications.
>Case in point: Microsoft is stopping free support for Windows 10 on hundreds of millions of computers this very week. Many of these old yet perfectly usable devices will not be able to upgrade because of spurious hardware requirements. Microsoft’s solution? “Throw away your computer and pollute the planet because we want to make even more money.”
Windows 10 was released in 2015. Does KDE still support whatever version of KDE was released in 2015?
KDE 5 was released in 2015 and still supported on Arch Linux. Even KDE 3, released in, 2002 is still supported and installable: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
You're misunderstanding - the point is that current (supported) versions of KDE support hardware manufactured in 2015, and current (supproted) versions of Windows will stop doing that very soon.
KDE has been my daily driver since 2008. The upgrade from KDE2 to KDE3 was a nightmare, but once the dust settled, KDE became quite good... One of my favorite things about KDE is how they have left the user a wide berth to customize their experience. After almost 20 years of tweaking, I find moving to other desktop GUIs to be very painful. And to this day Dolphin is the gold standard for file managers.
Thanks, KDE team!
I'm absolutely loving KDE since I returned to desktop Linux after a long absence.
What really shocks me is how few of the big distros make KDE a default or "first class" DE choice. If I was a novice user coming from Windows, I'd much prefer KDE, which if you stick to the GUI is very navigable and similar in some ways.
GNOME essentially gutted itself when it switched away from GNOME 2.
Somehow they still stuck around as a broken default. Go figure.
IIRC, then a lot of documentation still mentions GNOME first and then KDE second.
Furthermore, Ubuntu without the prefix is GNOME. Kubuntu is KDE. And all the others like Lubuntu, etc. all seem "special" to casual users.
Think of what the average university student installs in a VM, when they need to run some random command-line tool. Plain stock Ubuntu.
And GNOME lives on as a sorry excuse for a bad copy of MacOS desktop looks without the feel.
It’s the default because it’s much easier to provide a consistent desktop with gnome compared to KDE. Let’s face it, most quality Linux desktop apps use GTK. Even Firefox uses gtk.
So you can make KDE the default but you’re going to be forced to ship a smattering of gnome/gtk apps anyway with different ui/ux and looks.
On the other hand, you can easily ship a GNOME desktop without even shipping qt libraries at all.
Kubuntu isn't really feature complete compared to Ubuntu, for example the installer doesn't allow to create a zfs on root install.
zfs on Linux has not been production ready for decades. People have lost data from it. There's no real reason to allow the default installer to do this.
If you understand the risks, you can do it yourself.
Wow. Ran Kubuntu and never noticed this. This makes the "special" Unbuntu derivatives even less interesting to casual users.
Are there any active gnome 2 forks? That's when I left gnome, too, and I haven't found anything I like as well.
MATE was forked around the time GNOME 3 was released and is still going. https://mate-desktop.org
Some people consider Cinnamon to be a GNOME 2 spiritual successor while still using a lot of GNOME 3 stuff under the hood. https://projects.linuxmint.com/cinnamon/
As a long-time GNOME user, I support this sentiment entirely. What a disaster. It keeps getting worse too. Now you can barely even tell foreground from background windows thanks to this Adwaita bullshit. First they removed all the features, now they're removing all of the visual information.
Same, I've using GNOME for a long time and haven't switched yet out of laziness and being busy with other things, but the next time I have to upgrade my laptop I'm giving KDE a spin, I'm tired of GNOME replacing useful features with... nothing.
They deprecate something and replace it with an app that looks sleek because it has no buttons, and it has no buttons because it has none of the features that I use. And this has happened with the file browser, the image browser, the pdf browser, the text editor... I've lost count. GNOME is seriously worse to use now than it was 15 years ago. At this point I'm not sure what they have left to butcher, but every new version they seem to surprise me with something new they found to mess with.
It's not just worse. It's MUCH worse. I'm in the same boat. I want to change but I don't know what to and haven't had the energy to put into that yet. This desktop is dead though and they're just beating it's dead corpse at this point. I've tried KDE a few times and it was just too disorganized for me, so I might just do something simpler like awesome or one of those tiling things and add in what I want. I used to just use openbox. There must be something equally simple for Wayland.
It’s far from dead. Take a look at the gnome circle apps as a demonstration of how many good applications are being written for gnome these days.
I believe a large part of this is due to the fact that to use QT you are still stuck with either C++ or Python, whereas there are a ton of gnome apps being written in JS and Rust now.
Gnome isn't dead - it looks more consistent, and in my experience, is running smoothet and cleaner than it ever has (including gnome2 days). It's fine that it's not for you, but comments like this are insane, and not healthy. It's 2025, we don't need to I sult software we don't want to use - just don't use it.
(And, threatening to move back to something like openbox, because gnome is too simple and degraded, is extra hilarious)
What GNOME was is completely dead. All of that flexibility and all of those features are gone. This thing here is something else wearing it's dead corpse.
> consistent
Ah yes, very consistent with two entirely different sets of window borders (GTK3 and Adwaita).
> And GNOME lives on as a sorry excuse for a bad copy of MacOS desktop looks without the feel.
This is an inaccurate description. GNOME is a copy of (the worst parts of) Windows 8 and Mac OS, not just Mac OS.
But seriously, GNOME isn't that bad, and there are people who genuinely enjoy it over KDE. Choice is what makes the Linux ecosystem great.
However, I do agree that KDE is probably a saner default than GNOME, if the goal is to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier. GNOME is (probably) less buggy than KDE, simply due to having less features overall, but the UX is going to be completely alien and off-putting to most casual users.
If I look back at it, GNOME is likely responsible for me abandoning all of my attempts to transition to linux when I was younger. I had no idea KDE or alt desktop environments even existed back then and even now distros don't make it easy to discover/experiment with them. It's to the point I have some internal bias against trusting any distro that uses GNOME as the default.
I hope in the future KDE overtakes GNOME to become the "standard linux" experience.
Personally I really like GNOME, and don't in any way consider it a "sorry excuse".
It's not perfect, of course, and it may not be to your liking, but that's just personal preference. I don't particularly care for KDE, but I don't go around spouting vitriol about it for no good reason.
GNOME was ... weird in an uncool way even in version 2 if you ask me. The file picker dialog I distinctly 'member being particularly bad.
There are two minds of thought.
1. Like yours, KDE is similar to Windows so it's less scary for new users.
2. KDE is similar to Windows so will confuse users when it doesn't run Windows software or doesn't quite behave in the same way. Macs don't look the same and people don't get scared or expect their Windows software to run on it.
I can see both arguments, and I've definitely seen internet complaints about both KDE and Gnome being either too similar or not similar enough and they are confused.
KDE looks different enough to windows in its default install though. And you can make it look like whatever you want, that's the best thing about it. Mine is heavily customised.
> KDE looks different enough to windows in its default
Uhhhh it does?
https://kde.org/content/plasma-desktop/plasma-launcher.png
https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/win10-sta...
https://pointieststick.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/hebrew...
https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/cho...
I like KDE a lot, and yes you can configure it to look and act just abut any way you like, but it's default definitely has a lot in common with Windows.
I think there’s more thoughts to…
I migrated my non-technical mom from windows to Ubuntu in 2005 and my daily support questions on how to do this and that went to once a few weeks. Gnome 2 and Firefox was very simple. The OpenOffice stability was also great when Microsoft switched to ribbon.
Eventually I got her on a Mac and she hasn’t asked a question since. She keeps buying new ones ever since.
Point 2 doesn’t count. As far as Windows 11 is concerned even Windows doesn’t run games like old Windows.
What do you mean?
Many people (myself included) seem to get the impression that software that used to run on MS Windows before version 11 doesn’t enjoy the same level if backwards compatibility and forwards compatibility like it used to. People were half-joking that Linux/WINE now runs some older games better than Windows 11.
The impression might, of course, be mistaken.
Maybe I need to lower my expectations a bit but I feel like someone who is explicitly leaving windows for Linux by that point would understand it can’t run everything windows does right? In the same way basically everyone gets that a lot of software doesn’t operate on Mac and Windows.
> I feel like someone who is explicitly leaving windows for Linux by that point would understand it can’t run everything windows does right?
I get it, but it's unfortunately not true.
The amount of folks I've seen complain about their Windows pirate copy of Photoshop CS6 not working on Linux so they will go to Mac over the years has been quite silly.
They’re complaining but I think they at least knew that it wasn’t going to work out the box if at all, they just tried anyway. I work in film production so I’ve seen this exact scenario multiple times and you’re absolutely right, but they weren’t surprised IME. They just thought they could figure it out.
I usually tell them “if you have to use Adobe, then move on. If you don’t care that much, there are plenty of free/affordable programs with feature parity (or better) for Linux against CS6.” I mean it’s pretty old!
I can easily see a novice user coming from Windows accidentally getting into the edit mode of Plasma and being completely confused. I like KDE as an advanced user but I wouldn't install it on my grandma's laptop.
I agree that it would be great to have it as a first-class citizen in more distros, but I guess the maintenance burden is not negligible. I'm glad Fedora promoted it though.
The average Linux user is not your grandma and lets not overstate how easy it is to mess up your KDE config. Most of the config ui in KDE is delightful compared to other desktop environments, and most non-technical users would shy away from even trying to fiddle with technical stuff. And those that do fiddle and mess up are likely to have a technical person at hand to help them, because someone had to install Linux for them in the first place.
KDE is a much more sensible default for the highly technical person who is likely to install Linux themselves. There are other great options if you want something more locked down and noob proof. KDE really is the most relevant choice for default for most distros atm.
Playing devil's advocate, KDE settings are clear but there might be a possibility for a "Advanced Mode" button (with a first-time click warning) on the top-right of the "Quick Settings" screen that opens up when we launch the Settings. That can hide the "risky" stuff (e.g. "Window Management" etc). There might be value in adding a "Lock Panels" options to handle accidental modifications/removal etc.
I agree with the “Advanced Mode” button. That’d solve a great deal of the issues that KDE Settings suffers.
On the other hand I think it could use a fair deal of work on the clarity front. There are a number of settings that are confusing or ambiguous even for some technical users.
I've had the opposite experience. I installed KDE on a new desktop I built for my mom, and outside of a handful of growing pains (mainly things Windoze had vendor locked), she's been happy as a lark with it. She hasn't gone very far off the beaten path and really doesn't have too much of a need to.
And she is in fact a grandma.
What’s up with this constant insistence that the Linux desktop should be familiar to windows users? I feel like people are just as likely to be familiar with OSX at this point.
Also I’m not sure why sticking with a 30 year old mouse driven desktop metaphor is a hard requirement.
I’ve been trying it out coming from the Mac recently, mostly because I had to do stuff that didn’t play well with an arm processor.
It is surprisingly elegant and polished now. There’s a couple rough edges - the settings menu needing the apply button on every change like a form is weirdly ancient, and notifications are a bit noisy, but overall I could see myself ditching macOS for it.
I loved the KDE 3.x series, it felt like the future to me. It was _way_ ahead of both Windows and Mac at the time in terms of features and power.
KDE 4 was a dud. Too much of a radical make-over instead of iterating on what worked. Ugly. Very crashy. I'm not sure how close KDE 4 came to killing KDE altogether, but it must have been pretty close.
KDE 5 was a vast improvement over 4, going back to what made 3 so good. Earlier releases left a bit to be desired and still had a few stability issues. Later releases were pretty well refined. I switched (back) to KDE at this point, when I switched to Debian 12 (bookworm) at the same time.
KDE 6 is just a continuation of KDE 5, but using Qt 6 under the hood and defaulting to Wayland. It's very solid, fast, and just gets out of your way so you can do real work with it.
The 4.x series was the one where the ideas still making Plasma so powerful were seeded. While I loved KDE 3 the design for 4 seemed revolutionary. Too bad it was alpha/beta quality up until the 4.6 release years later. I fared through all the bugs, crashes and performance issues with a young student's determination (while running Fluxbox on the side) but I can very well understand people doing serious work had limited patience for the issues.
Anyhow, happy anniversary from a long-time KDE user!
I'm loving KDE 6. It's what a good desktop environment should be.
Just enough eye candy to make it feel pleasant, and yet also very fast and responsive on even a potato of a computer.
I don't daily drive KDE, but when I set up our home media PC in the living room over the weekend, KDE was a no-brainier to pick for the DE.
Everything immediately just worked, it's familiar enough that someone not used to Linux can click around and get to things, and as a bonus, controlling it from the couch with our phones is trivial with KDE Connect.
It feels good to donate to a high quality sane default that has been serving my needs as a daily driver. The more I see the mistreatment of Windows users by Microsoft, the more I am grateful for Linux and KDE.
I use KDE on my home PC since about a 15 years, exclusively. I like it a lot but it still has some rough edges here and there. For example, the network config interface is a bit messy. Sure you can configure many things with it, but it's hard to understand). Dolphin is the best file manager I have ever used, nothing come close nowadays (I have tested windows and macs). The desktop configuration is quite nice and the look and feel is really good too.
Unfortunately, it still crashes sometimes (about 2 or 3 times over 500 hours of usage, but my PC is 15 years old, so this may explain that).
And as many here, I sure don't think about changing.
Thank you KDE team !
Dolphin is a real gem. Split windows, tabs, open terminal in current location, etc. Going back to Windows Explorer is painful once you've gotten used to Dolphin.
Supporting it is important so we have an alternative to GNOME/GTK
GNOME ruined my Linux experience, I'm no fan of the tablet/smartphone UX spreading to desktop
I've been running KDE plasma with wayland in arch for over a year now, it's been an absolute dream come true. Everything just works. Gaming with Proton, dual monitors with different resolutions, Japanese input, I only need to hop onto windows when my son wants to play Minecraft.
You might not need to even for Minecraft, have you seen this project? https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher (Android version of Bedrock made to work on Linux)
I maintain the AUR package for this. `mcpelauncher-linux` and `mcpelauncher-ui`. If you just do a simple `paru -S mcpelauncher-ui`, it should build just fine.
To add to the solutions proposed you could also use a mod called geysermc to make the server compatible with both Java and bedrock.
Huh, why? Minecraft is Java. It works perfectly fine on Linux, both the server and the client.
Since MS bought it, aren't there two versions, a legacy one called "Java" and the newer one from MS, probably not in Java and with all the cool kids (multiplayer mode) on it?
There is Java and bedrock. Everyone I know has Java. There are other differences, but multiplayer is available in both.
The difference it's that bedrock allows you to play with the people that use Minecraft on consoles or mobile and Java doesn't
You're right, my bad!
I remembered some friends complaining about the fact the since MS, they couldn't play as they did before because of two versions co-existing
Thanks KDE - I always liked the Windows-like design (that's what I would call it coming from Windows like many people).
Instead of hiding "power-user" features so well you have to google them to find them, I can interact with the OS on gui or command-line level - really depending mostly on my mood.
Although KDEConnect to easily connect a Windows PC, a Linux laptop and an android phone to share files and control my pc while watching a movie was the "step-up". When they are in the same network and approved, they simply connect.
and iPhone!
I donate monthly anyway. KDE is amazing and I love the extensive options in this day and age of horrible opinionated design.
I just wish they weren't in such a hurry to deprecate X11 because Wayland isn't quite there yet on my OS (FreeBSD)
How's the gpu driver? Which chip would you recommend for the beast?
My first introduction to Linux was through Knoppix, the first “live CD” if I recall correctly. Maybe there was something before it, but I remember it as something new and magical at the time: being able to test a full Linux desktop directly from a CD.
From there, as I was learning Linux (I was 16 years old), I used KDE a lot. It was such a cool experience. I especially loved how easy it was to create custom themes, the desktop widgets, and Amarok! the big “killer app” back then. A music player that could show you song lyrics, album art, and even the band’s history by pulling data from Wikipedia and other APIs. It felt futuristic.
Later on, I switched to GNOME as it became more popular in the mid 2000s, but I’ve always had a soft spot for KDE. It’s been part of my Linux journey for nearly three decades.
Happy birthday, KDE!
With this hitting multiple communications media for me independently over the last few hours, it has me considering whether I can switch from Windows to Linux for my gaming PC again.
Last time I tried, I used Ubuntu, and I experienced problems with several games via Proton (e.g., The Finals, Fields of Mistria, and Civilization VII, among others). I checked ProtonDB, and it looks like those issues may be resolved.
However, I also wonder what people are using to replace iCloud/OneDrive/Dropbox/whatever on Linux. Or, if they don't use such a thing in the first place, how they handle off-site backups of files and images.
At work I use OneDriveGUI with no problems.
- https://github.com/bpozdena/OneDriveGUI
I tried recently and unfortunately had to bail out
Thanks for all the work done over the years! I've donated to the project many times and it always feels good to support something I enjoy using every day.
Glad they keep using the mascots to help brand and punch up their images.
Both artist links are either private or show closed commissions, so the artists aren't fishing for exposure to do lead gen, they have a passion to help make KDE be a better marketable product.
I daily drive KDE, but I'm glad that in part thanks go the KDE projects approach to accessibility to newcomers and these artists' desires to help out, we get visual aids for the masses, which are pleasant for those of us who live in walls of text and can help humanize an otherwise dry technical subject, aiding newcomers considering joining the project to have an easier time understanding what they are looking at.
I've installed two KDE+Tumbleweed machines in the past two days. One for a friend into retro gaming and the other time for older family into solitaire/youtube. KDE is an easy drop-in for Windows. If you have a better recommendation than Tumbleweed for new people, I'm open to looking into it, but so far it's been easy and I'll probably be the one to support it.
I'm still surprised at how smooth KDE Plasma + Wayland + Input actions on Arch feels on a fresh install on my new HP AMD laptop.
The Only slightly wonky thing has been the fingerprint reader. Other than that my Linux set up now feels smoother than my office Mac. AND I get way better battery life compared to Windows on the same machine.
Special call outs to: kwin, dolphin, yakuake, kde-connect
I was pleasantly surprised, that a recent update for plasma fixed the fingerprint reader for my thinkpad t15. It previously had an issue, where it didn't work after waking from suspend.
I am used to having "Emacs key-bindings" on both gnome and Mac (so that for example ctrl-a will always go to the beginning of a textbox no matter the application, such as chrome).
For some strange reason this seems to be very hard thing to set up on KDE or am I missing something?
> so that for example ctrl-a will always go to the beginning of a textbox no matter the application
And Control-W will always erase word no matter the application?
This is actually a major reason I use KDE: I can, with some effort, change keyboard shortcuts to avoid conflicting with terminal Control keys. It doesn't solve the textbox problem, though.
(I don't use Emacs bindings, but Control-W erase word came in the ‘new’ TTY driver in BSD2 in 1983 — predating Windows 1.0, incidentally — likely copying TOPS-20.)
On paper KDE's system is more elegant and practical than GNOME's. In practice the keyboard shortcut management via exporting and importing is rather unwieldy. Then again, if you want to go deep into setting up your shortcuts to something properly usable, it's a fair bit more convenient with KDE, where all your shortcuts are in a single place, than with GNOME, where you have to look in all the gconf categories and it's a right pain to find conflicts.
There are projects like kinto that achieve very good results at making Linux behave like macOS on shortcuts (cmd instead of ctrl only when it makes sense, etc).
I’m not sure how they do it, i suspect it’s mostly a manual grind for configuring the most common shortcuts and apps, but there might be some idea there that can be reused for the eMacs setup.
As I thought: you can set a different shortcut for "Beginning of line" and it will work in Qt input fields but, sadly, not others. I don't know if this is the step you're on.
I'm not sure this is the reason or a big reason, but I think this is very difficult to do in Linux, sadly.
What makes Linux great is also its biggest handicap, in my opinion, when it comes to User Experience: the fragmentation of UI frameworks and libraries.
I imagine having this control between Qt, GTK and other UI libraries and electron-type-apps os difficult if not impossible.
It works perfectly on Gnome (ubuntu) though. There is simple toggle you have to do in one of the standard control panels as well.
I am surprised this issue is not gaining traction with the KDE crowd, as I imagine a substantial part of the userbase are emacs users and used to emacs keybindings.
omg I found my people. Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E are so engraved into my muscle memory that it always takes a moment to readjust when using non Mac OSes. I didn't know Gnome also uses those as a KDE fan
This seemed like something relatively easy for chatgpt to handle. The response is a bit complicated compared to what it sounds like you are looking for (it's not from the kde settings gui), but still a two minute "fix".
Did the response ChatGPT give you actually work, or did it confidently hallucinate?
Happy birthday KDE, outside XFCE, KDE is the desktop I would go back to if I ever reconsider building a Linux desktop again.
Has all the developer goodies with KDevelop, written with tooling that empowers UI/UX development workflows, has a proper component system with much better tooling than COM, quite configurable without extensions all over the place.
Signed, a disillusioned former Gtkmm user, with how GNOME turned out.
For a sec I read it as a former Gkrellm user
It's been well over a decade (maybe closer to 2 in fact) since I have used KDE, and I'm happy with my more minimalist setup based on Arch+AwesomeWM, but I think KDE is a great project and like to follow its progress. It seems to have a great suite of software - the KDE versions of common applications often seem to be among the best FOSS options out there.
My first experience with KDE was the beta release that came with SuSE 5.2 in the late 90s. I still daily drive KDE, though very much has changed since then, it still is familiar.
I've installed KDE on my Ubuntu system instead of Gnome and it is pretty nice. It feels slightly more integrated, so lots of regular UI actions feel slicker and simpler.
I'm increasingly pessimistic about everyday reach of Linux.
Around me, all I see are Windows users, volunteers teaching old people how to use several tools... on Windows. Public institutions relying on Windows, upgrading to Windows 11, doing everything despite Trump, despite Microsoft, despite all of the negatives associated with it.
When primary school students are given Windows laptops instead of Linux ones, there's not much hope in changing. But how can you amass enough momentum and volunteers to get enough manpower to at least try to move in the other direction?
KDE surely helps, but it's like, nowadays simply trying to explain what a non-mobile OS is useful for, seems like yet another uphill battle, and I cannot fix even my small town by myself.
First and biggest challenge is that there's no single default desktop Linux, and even one distro could have different DEs, window servers, etc. Imagine asking for tech support, and giving your laptop model and OS is still not enough info.
I used Linux for a long time (since ~2002), but for the past years I've been daily-driving a MacBook.
I'm now switching back, and will likely go with either Gnome or KDE. I've used XFCE, i3wm, etc. for years before – and briefly tried Sway too before I switched to Mac – but from what I've read it sounds like the "big" DEs make life easier post-Wayland.
Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
Gnome UI sucks. It is ugly and non-customizable without plugins, or whatever you call that addon that enables you to put your clock on the right... I'm sure the UI makes more sense on a tablet or a phone with touch controls, but I just want to use it on my laptop with a regular monitor and with a mouse (or touchpad).
KDE has sane defaults and looks and feels like Windows UI from the best era. It just works.
"It just works" is the important part. The style doesn't matter a whole lot if things aren't working right. Is this other guy's comment about GTK not a real problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45581866
> Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
Just to give you an opposite perspective...I was a long time Kubuntu / KDE Neon user (almost 10 years) and shifted to Gnome couple of years back (Ubuntu 22.04), now running 24.04. It's been very stable and out of the way. I am not sure why people are complaining about UI, for me it's barely visible on my two screens. All open-source and proprietary apps I use run well and without glitch. It took me an hour to get used to the "Gnome" way when I shifted.
I don't want to install an extension which will break next time there's a new GNOME release just to be able to set my clock to '%A %F %R' format.
I guess because the defaults suits me better, and the configurability is exposed well and I don't have to load special tools or commands to change stuff.
I used to run complicated setups back in the days, with black/flux/openbox or even enlightenment (16), but now I don't really have the interest or time for tweaking DEs.
I find that Gnome opiniated workflow can easily get in my way. KDE feels more natural and it really grew on me after using it for quite some times.
>Anyone want to share why you currently choose KDE over Gnome?
GNOME is like a tool that was designed to fit the average user so if you are not the average user (like you know the joke where the average person has 1 testicle) then you have to mold yourself to fit into GNOME (or try to hack it with unsuported extensions that might make it more tolerable) in KDE you have nobs to tweak it to fit you smoothly (like for example with one checkbox I can make the Left Alt to be a Ctrl button so i do not bend my hand and fingers to use my many Ctrl+keys shortcuts).
IMO use GNOME only if you are the typical GNOME user, that prefer to bend themselves over and not to adapt the tool to fit . Avoid KDE if too many options cause you some anxiety or buffer overflow.
I switched from Gnome to KDE Plasma because I find it more stable and more integrated since many of the features I otherwise miss are out of the box in KDE Plasma, and you do not need third party extensions which are quite unstable. Also later found out Plasma is much more configurable and personalizable so I xan really fit it best to my orefered workflow. I also find KDE developers listen to their users much more.
Man, I am getting old too. :-O Still remember how amazed I was with KDE 1.
Amazing project my only gripes about KDE is that while the customization is great it can feel overwhelming and opaque. For example multiple different ways to get transparency (Kvantum & qt6ct) but nothing built in or large amount of different but seemingly connected config files with confusing syntax in .config
I hope the work on union will help fix some of that
Yes, if you choose to go off the happy path into the weeds, then you will be off the happy path in the weeds. The only desktop environments where that isn't true are the ones that forbid customization.
Amazing DE, daily driving KDE(Kubuntu) on my desktop for couple of years now and I can't imagine anything better.
KDE user since version 2. Fell in love with KMail. Even upgraded my RAM from 16 to 48MB to run it smoothly lol.
Stopped used it at version 4, the new kdepim was atrocious. But now it's usable again. Probably my largest peeve is how there's advanced desktop search/semantic engine but it has no own interface as if the devs were ashamed of it, search results only appear when you type something in menu. And if you google nepomuk/baloo most ppl just ask how to turn it off.
Donating montly and so happy to do it! <3
Started regularly donating last year and it is well worth it. KDE Plasma is the best desktop in existance and they also make one of the best FOSS applications.
How much do I have to pay to get ISO dates?
Nothing? I've got a date format option for ISO date right now?
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>Case in point: Microsoft is stopping free support for Windows 10 on hundreds of millions of computers this very week. Many of these old yet perfectly usable devices will not be able to upgrade because of spurious hardware requirements. Microsoft’s solution? “Throw away your computer and pollute the planet because we want to make even more money.”
Windows 10 was released in 2015. Does KDE still support whatever version of KDE was released in 2015?
KDE 5 was released in 2015 and still supported on Arch Linux. Even KDE 3, released in, 2002 is still supported and installable: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
No but upgrading KDE is free. It also doesn't force new hardware requirements.
You're misunderstanding - the point is that current (supported) versions of KDE support hardware manufactured in 2015, and current (supproted) versions of Windows will stop doing that very soon.
Counterpoint: any modern linux distro will run fine on your 10yo computer.
The point is that KDE from 2015 will still run on today’s hardware.
So will Windows 10, and it will receive as much support as a KDE version from 2015.
It isn't competing with an old KDE, it's competing with the current version of KDE that still works on that hardware.